The Value Narrative: Integrating Value Across the Customer Lifecycle

Karen Chiang is a Chief Value Officer at Ibbaka.  Connect with her on LinkedIn.

In today's competitive SaaS landscape, understanding and communicating value is crucial for sustainable growth. Rashaqa and I are pleased to present the 2nd installment of our Master Class hosted by PeakSpan Capital, where we delved into the intricacies of establishing a value mindset. In this post, I explain how B2B SaaS companies can optimize customer engagement and create a value-based culture using a customer value map.

Please watch the recap of this session here.

Establishing a habit and shifting to a value-based mindset requires 

  • Putting value at the center at each customer touch point

  • Knowing who both your internal and external stakeholders are

  • Using the value cycle to gauge how you achieve value at each stage of your customer journey

  • Aligning value drivers that are meaningful to your customers

For businesses focused on improving their customer value management posture, this post shares the highlights of our session.

The Value Cycle Framework

At the heart of this approach is the Value Cycle Framework, consisting of five key components.

Ibbaka's Value Cycle

  1. Value Creation: Understanding value from the customer's perspective and creating differentiated value relative to alternatives.

  2. Value Communication: Effectively articulating how the product or service creates value for different customer stakeholders throughout their journey.

  3. Value Delivery: Consistently delivering on the value promise through every interaction.

  4. Value Documentation: Systematically recording and quantifying the value delivered to customers.

  5. Value Capture: Ensuring a fair share of the value created is captured through appropriate pricing strategies.

See our Value Cycle Key Concepts Blog for more details

Value Drivers

First a quick review of  Ibbaka’s taxonomy for value drivers.

Applying the Value Cycle to the Customer Journey 

A customer value map is a mapping value throughout the entire customer journey. A customer value map helps transition from siloed value claims to a smooth, value-focused customer lifecycle. Value is defined for each interaction and touchpoint we have with external stakeholders. Here’s how you create your customer value map:

  1. Define your customer journey stages and touchpoints

  2. Associate these stages to your CRM pipeline

  3. Identify your internal and external stakeholders at each stage 

  4. Articulate how your value cycle is being recognized at each stage

  5. Expose the specific value drivers that are relevant at each stage

  6. Optimize the timeline for value delivery

Customer Value Map - A Presentation of Ibbaka’s Value Map

At Ibbaka, we have 10 customer journey stages ranging from cultivate to renew, expand, and advocate. We then associated these stages with our CRM stages.

For each of the journey stages, we want to understand how much time it takes for our external stakeholders to realize value and find ways to optimize it. We also identify who are our internal stakeholders who will be involved in touching our external stakeholders. Stakeholder roles will shift as they are handed off to colleagues during the customer journey. We then identify the resource used in each of the value cycle components. Here is an illustration of these components for our Stage 3 Discover.

Exposing the specific value drivers that are relevant at each stage is fundamental to building your value narrative. We aim to make sure the value claims we are making at the beginning of our journey are being validated and measured. Often, we can see that the importance of various value drivers shifts. We want to be able to effectively respond to how our external stakeholders perceive the value we create for them. This is why we need to regularly engage in a value conversation and make sure we adjust depending on where the stage the customer is and whether other factors are forcing an evolution. Examples can be changes in market conditions, needing to respond to competitive innovations, external stakeholder changes, or improvements to our offering.

In the illustration below, you will see how we chose to emphasize certain value drivers in our cultivate stage. By the time, we are working with a specific customer, we can see that the emphasis of value drivers includes peace of mind and confidence to position value, packages, and price.

Key Takeaways for B2B SaaS Companies

To establish a value-based mindset focused on the customer, businesses should:

  • Identify stakeholders throughout the customer value journey

  • Align value drivers (economic, emotional, and community) meaningful to each stakeholder

  • Articulate outcomes and measure performance at each stage of the customer journey

  • Provide the tools to support customer value management

  • Conduct regular checkpoint sessions to verify impact 

  • Continuously refine your customer value map 

Doing this is critical for long-term success. By adopting this comprehensive approach to value, B2B SaaS companies can enhance customer engagement, drive growth, and establish a sustainable competitive advantage in today's dynamic marketplace.

How Ibbaka Can Help

Ibbaka's Customer Value Management Platform is specifically designed to help B2B SaaS companies communicate value, price smarter, and grow faster. Our platform offers:

  • Sophisticated value model engine for accurate understanding of your solution value

  • Pricing generator that seamlessly connects value and pricing strategy

  • Dynamic value stories for powerful customer conversations

  • Deep data insights to analyze performance, identify growth opportunities, and predict churn

Ibbaka will work with you to align your teams around value, increase revenue, and minimize churn across your install base.

Take the next step in optimizing your customer value management. 

Contact Ibbaka today to learn how we can transform your approach to value creation, communication, delivery, document, and capture.

 
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